A floppy drive was so called because floppy disks were inserted and written to or read from. From the point of view of the user it was a method of storing information for later retrieval. In a hard drive the disks were mounted within the unit. It was still a method of storing information for retrieval later. The original optical drives were used to retrieve information that had been stored on a CD, and later a DVD and also later used to store data on a CD or DVD. A thumb drive (or what ever you do or don't want to call it) is a method of storing information for retrieval later. The fact that nothing is driven is irrelevant; from the point of view of the user it does everything that the previous versions of drives did. You might as well complain about Newsweek being called a magazine because it isn't a building and there are no physical objects stored in it. The defense rests.